A Sojourner's Tears Text: Psalm 39:12-13
Introduction: The Permanent Tourists
We live in an age that has forgotten its address. Modern man, particularly in the West, is a permanent tourist. He lives in a world he believes is his own, but he treats it like a cheap hotel. He consumes its resources, complains about the service, and never once thinks about the owner or the fact that checkout time is coming. He has convinced himself that he is a resident, a landlord even, when the Scriptures are abundantly clear that he is, at best, a tenant on a very short lease.
This delusion is the central project of secularism: to make men feel at home in a world from which they are profoundly alienated. They do this by stuffing their ears with the cotton of consumerism and distracting their eyes with an endless parade of digital baubles. The goal is to make sure no one ever has to confront the two foundational realities of our existence: God and death. They want to build a world under a brass heaven, a world where prayers go unanswered because they go unsaid, and where tears are not a prelude to comfort but a sign of a chemical imbalance that needs to be medicated.
Into this carefully constructed fantasy of permanence, the psalmist David drives a hard wedge of truth. He reminds us that our position here is temporary, transient, and utterly dependent. He does not see his mortality as an inconvenient truth to be ignored, but as the central premise of his most urgent prayers. He knows he is a foreigner here, a temporary resident, and this knowledge does not lead him to despair, but rather to his knees. He understands that the only way to live rightly as a sojourner is to be in constant communication with the King of the country.
The modern world tells you to dry your tears, to be strong, to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. The Bible tells you that your tears are a valid argument before the throne of God. The world tells you to build your home here, to lay up treasures on earth, to make a name for yourself. The Bible tells you that you are just passing through. This psalm, then, is a frontal assault on the modern conceit of self-sufficiency. It is a lesson in the forgotten art of godly desperation.
The Text
“Hear my prayer, O Yahweh, and give ear to my cry for help;
Do not be silent at my tears;
For I am a sojourner with You,
A foreign resident like all my fathers.
Turn Your gaze away from me, that I may smile again
Before I go and am no more.”
(Psalm 39:12-13 LSB)
An Audience for Our Tears (v. 12)
We begin with David's threefold appeal to God.
"Hear my prayer, O Yahweh, and give ear to my cry for help; Do not be silent at my tears; For I am a sojourner with You, A foreign resident like all my fathers." (Psalm 39:12)
Notice the progression here. It moves from coherent speech ("my prayer") to a raw, inarticulate outburst ("my cry for help") and finally to the most basic, pre-verbal expression of anguish ("my tears"). David is saying, "Lord, if you cannot hear my words, then hear my groans. And if you will not hear my groans, then at least look at my tears." This is a man at the end of his rope. But the end of our rope is precisely where God loves to meet us, because it is there that we have finally run out of our own strength and are ready to rely on His.
Our culture despises this kind of vulnerability. It sees tears as weakness. But in the covenant, tears are currency. They are a potent argument. God keeps our tears in a bottle (Psalm 56:8). He does not disregard them. Why? Because tears are a confession of creaturely limitation. They are a liquid admission that we are not God, that we are not in control, and that we need help from outside ourselves. The Stoic with his stiff upper lip is not a Christian ideal; he is a pagan trying to be his own savior. The Christian knows he has a Savior, and so he is free to weep.
And what is the basis of this appeal? "For I am a sojourner with You, a foreign resident like all my fathers." This is the crucial point. He is not a sojourner in the abstract; he is a sojourner with You. This is not the alienation of an orphan. This is the temporary displacement of a son who knows his Father owns the whole country. A sojourner, a "ger" in Hebrew, was a resident alien who lived under the protection of a native patron. David is saying, "I am Your man. I am living in Your land, under Your laws, and I am entitled to Your protection."
This is a covenantal argument. He is reminding God of the terms of their relationship. We are not cosmic vagrants. We are pilgrims on a journey to a city whose builder and maker is God (Heb. 11:10). But while we are on the road, we are under the embassy protection of Heaven. This world is not our home, but it is our Father's world. We are strangers and aliens to the world system, but we are resident aliens under the care of God Himself. And like our fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, we live by faith in the promises of a homeland we have not yet seen. This transient condition is not a bug; it is a feature. It is designed to keep us from settling down and getting comfortable in enemy territory.
The Crushing Gaze of Law (v. 13)
Now we come to a verse that, on the surface, seems startling, almost irreverent.
"Turn Your gaze away from me, that I may smile again Before I go and am no more." (Psalm 39:13 LSB)
Why would a man who has just been begging for God's attention now ask Him to look away? Is this a contradiction? Not at all. We must understand what kind of "gaze" David is talking about. This is not the loving gaze of a Father, but the scrutinizing, intense gaze of a Judge. It is the gaze of the holy law of God which examines and finds fault. Under the weight of his own sin and frailty, which he has been meditating on earlier in the psalm, David feels that the holy stare of God is simply too much to bear. It is a consuming fire.
Think of it like this. If you are trying to fix a delicate watch, the intense, focused light of a magnifying lamp is essential. But if you are a man with a terrible sunburn, that same intense light is agony. David, feeling the heat of his own sin and God's chastening hand, is saying, "Lord, grant me a reprieve. Give me a moment of relief from this intense pressure, this holy scrutiny, so I can catch my breath." He is asking for a moment of common grace, a little breathing room, a chance to "smile again" before his short life is over.
This is the cry of a man under the law. It is the honest cry of every sinner who has ever felt the weight of God's perfect holiness. Before a holy God, our only plea is for mercy, for forbearance, for Him to turn His eyes away from our iniquities. Job says something similar: "Will you not look away from me, and let me alone till I swallow my spit?" (Job 7:19). It is the recognition that if God were to deal with us according to our sins, none could stand.
From Law to Gospel
This psalm leaves us on a cliffhanger. It is a raw, honest prayer from a man keenly aware of his frailty and his sin, a man who knows he is just passing through. But it is not the final word. This prayer finds its ultimate answer not in God looking away, but in God looking at someone else.
On the cross, Jesus Christ became the ultimate sojourner. He left His heavenly home and pitched His tent among us (John 1:14). He was the truest stranger and alien, rejected by the very world His Father owned. And on that cross, He absorbed the full, undiluted, scrutinizing gaze of God's holy wrath against sin. The gaze that David begged to be turned away from him was turned, in its full intensity, upon the Son.
Jesus cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" He endured the silence that David feared. He wept tears of blood. He did this so that the gaze of God toward us, who are in Christ, could be transformed. Because of Christ, God's gaze is no longer the condemning stare of a judge, but the loving, smiling gaze of a Father welcoming His child home.
So when we pray this psalm now, we do it through Christ. We can still acknowledge our frailty. We can still confess that we are sojourners. Our tears are still a valid argument. But we no longer have to ask God to look away. Instead, we can say, "Father, look at me, for I am hidden in Your Son. Look not on my sin, but on His righteousness. Let me see You smile, not because I am worthy, but because He is."
Conclusion: Citizens of a Better Country
The truth of this psalm is a necessary antidote to the poison of our age. You are not a permanent resident. This life is a vapor. You are here for a little while, and then you are gone. The world wants you to forget this. It wants you to invest everything in this fleeting life. God wants you to remember it, so that you will live with an eye toward eternity.
Being a sojourner is not a curse; it is a blessing. It keeps you light on your feet. It keeps you from accumulating junk that you can't take with you. It reminds you that your true citizenship is in heaven (Phil. 3:20). It forces you to depend on God for your daily bread and your ultimate protection.
So do not be afraid of your tears. They are a sign that you know you are not home yet. Bring them to your Father. He will not be silent. And do not fear the gaze of God. In Christ, that gaze is no longer a threat, but a promise. It is the loving gaze that will one day welcome you out of this foreign land and into your true country, the place where He will personally wipe every tear from your eyes, and you will go out no more.